The Baby Thief

In what has been long regarded as an act of goodness, one of bringing families together, american adoption has the roots of greed, lies and anguish. Georgia Tann of Memphis, Tennessee has long been regarded as the founder of the modern day adoption process. Before Tann's dominance in the Tennessee social work system, adoption was virtually unheard of, and certainly not something a family would admit to have participated in. In Barbara Bisantz Raymond's book "The Baby Thief: The Untold Story of Georgia Tann, the Baby Seller Who Corrupted Adoption", Raymond exposes the dark beginning's of adoption at the hands of Georgia Tann and the corrupt "legal" system of Tennessee that supported Tann during her more than twenty five year reign as the number one baby thief in the country.


(Photo from babythief.com of Billy Hale & his Mother Mollie, one of Tann's victims)


Seeing unwed single mothers as "cows" who were nothing more than breeding machienes to produce a money making product, children. Finding these women through spies she employed in hospitals,maternity homes or free lance "runners" who would go through out the area to find these women. Tann would often have her employees lie to the mothers saying that the babies were stillborn, have the women sign away the babies while still under anesthesia (anesthesia was routinely used during child birth at the time), or resort to the actual theft of children.


Tann had no emotional attachment to her work, or those involved, using the children that were stolen as commodities, often giving babies to judges, doctors, lawyers, etc as a way to blackmail them if they tried to dispute her intentions. Tann grossed over a million dollars during the depression, charging ludacris amounts for her services to her clients, and through blackmail, ensured that she would not face prosicution. During Tann's operation, Tennessee had the highest infant mortality rate than any other state in the country. Tann ignored legislation that was supposed to ensure that infants were not prematurely removed from the birth mother, and even took in premature infants that did not weigh the five pounds that was necessary for hospital discharge. Although Tann only admitted to four infant deaths, there are believed to be as many as five thousand that have died through abuse and neglect, buried either in the back yard of the children's "home" or in unmarked graves near by.


Contrary to today's adoption legislation, there was no regulation of whom was allowed to adopt these children, often placed into homes that were just as abusive as the Tann orphanage. Children were often adopted out to pedophiles,treated as slaves, forced to work as farm hands or maids, even though there were more fourtunate ones who did receive loving homes, it was hit or miss. One of the more publicized results of a Tann adoption can we seen in the movie "Mommy Dearest", as Joan Crawford was a reported client. It would not be until fifty years after Georgia Tann's death in September of 1950, that legislation would be put into action to unseal the birth records of her victims, and give rights to future adoptee's to know their roots.


(Picture from babythief.com, Georgia Tann home, the center of her buisness)


Raymond does an excellent job of uncovering a controversy in America's adoption system, that without her research, may not have allowed for the current legislation giving rights to adopted children. Giving vivid description to Tann's baby snatching techniques, can strike a very real fear into any parents heart. It was truly appauling how the "legal" system allowed such a blatent abuse of humanity, to operate.